Background description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Setting up a telecommunication network and/or computer network requires intense study and planning for placement of different telecommunication equipment or network devices. Strategic positioning of telecommunication equipment or network devices can provide optimal performance to the network without increasing much of capital investment in setting up the network and maintaining the network. For example, in order to set-up an efficient telecommunication network, it is required that the planning system, which help plan the network, identifies telecommunication equipment that need to be placed, how many such equipment are needed to be placed and locations at which they are to be placed. The network should be planned and network devices or telecommunication equipment need to be placed at strategic locations depending on bandwidth requirements, number of estimated users, suggested network topology, among other network and performance parameters. Each network needs to be planned and network equipment need to be placed at strategic locations to serve maximum number of users or provide maximum coverage. As network requirements vary, different topologies are required for implementation, and hence different locations for network devices/telecommunication equipment are expected. This requires customized and specific solutions for different networks having varying complexities that use different topologies and have different service demands. Adding each network device/telecommunication equipment to a network increases the cost of set-up and maintenance of the networks, and therefore generic planning and placement for different types of network scenarios to set-up networks with large number of network devices/telecommunication equipment, is not advisable. At the same time, the network also needs to ensure that there are enough telecommunication equipment and none of the network devices/telecommunication equipment are overburdened.
An optimal network design should use minimum number of network devices/telecommunication equipment and place these network devices/telecommunication equipment at strategic locations for achieving maximum utilization, and for serving maximum number of connected devices. This requires solution for planning an optimal network and determining placement of network devices/telecommunication equipment for optimal performance of telecommunication network. Similar solutions are also required for setting up a computer network and determining placement of telecommunication devices for the network. It has been observed that strategic locations for different network devices or telecommunication equipment help in reducing the number of network devices/telecommunication equipment required in a network. There is therefore a need for systems and methods for determining optimal locations/positions of placement of different network devices or telecommunication equipment.
Prior art solutions provide several tools for designing a new network. However the problem of determining strategic locations for new network devices/telecommunication equipment has not been adequately addressed. With the number of users within a network increasing, or periodic modifications being made in the network, new nodes and/or network devices and/or telecommunication equipment need to be added in the network at run time, and therefore placement of new telecommunication equipment needs to be determined/estimated with high accuracy.
There are different factors that may influence determination of location for placement of network devices or telecommunication equipment. In order to create a network, a number of different parameters such as topology of the network, description of each of the relevant sites within the network, and connectivity and bandwidth requirements between these sites, need to be provided. These parameters are processed for determining location/position of network devices or telecommunication equipment. None of existing solutions are able to determine optimal placements for one or more telecommunication equipment or network devices based on different input constraints, such as network topology, SLA, demand matrix, among others.
Accordingly, systems and methods are required for addressing the above-described deficiencies within prior-art network planning and equipment deployment solutions. There also exists a need for systems and methods for determining strategic placement of network devices and/or telecommunication equipment in a network.